Making Myself a Priority Ensures Everybody Wins

by Lynn Brewer Feb 20, 2016

For a long time now, it’s been easier to focus on everybody else’s needs before considering my own. I suspect it started in childhood as I stepped into my role as the eldest child in the family. Somehow what I needed got bumped down lower and lower down the list of priorities as I tried to make myself as “perfect” as I could. Unfortunately, by the time I was sixteen, my definition of “perfect” was shaped by what other people wanted for me. My mom wanted me to be skinny. My dad wanted me to be a Supreme Court Justice. My teachers wanted me to enroll as an International Baccalaureate student. My shrink wanted me to believe in Jesus. This living for others continued into adulthood and my career (which, spoiler alert, was not on track to Supreme Court membership). I became an event planner and my client’s needs surpassed any of my own.

None of it worked out.

After years of this pattern, it wasn’t just easier to give everybody else what they needed above my own needs, it was also easier to stand up for other people than for myself. It was easier for me to have patience, generosity, and understanding for other people. This pattern persisted even into my OM practice, when I would protect my strokers’ egos at the cost of my own opportunity for increased sensation.

But it was also in my OM practice that I first learned how to break the pattern that had persisted my whole life. There’s a concept in Orgasmic Meditation to "stroke for your own pleasure" and trust your intuition by connecting your body to your desire. Stroking for your own pleasure can be used by strokees by simply giving your partner adjustments to guide him or her to the spot of most sensation. And the more often I trust and follow my own desires, the more I realize that it makes the experience more pleasurable for everyone involved. This is true in my OM practice, at the events I run for the OM community, and in my business. Because following my desire and stroking for my own pleasure is the best way I’ve found to take care of myself first. It’s the daily equivalent of putting on my own oxygen mask before assisting other passengers with theirs.

In doing so, what I’m learning is that people can only connect with me when I make loving myself the biggest priority on my list. It’s so counterintuitive to my pattern that sometimes it feels like heresy. The thing that keeps me trusting to stroke for my own pleasure is the beautiful simplicity of it — I trust my desire, I feel good, everyone around me feels good, and not only have I fed my needs, in doing so I’ve also taken care of those around me. Who knew that in reshuffling my priorities I’d actually get what I wanted all along?
Post originally published on the OmScribe